It's Official - Bid Bots Are Dead.
I did the research so you don't have to waste your STEEM. I've recently been posting like a madman on this blockchain, largely in an effort to figure out what is going to happen to the massive amount of STEEM delegated to the bidbot accounts. I mentioned this in a post titled "HF21: Heaven or Hell?" about a month ago. What I've found out, love it or hate it, is that
Bidbots are on their death bed.
Let's take a look at a table posted in that post from a month ago. Here we have a list of the top 5 bidbots and their total STEEM POWER, including delegations, one month ago.
- @therising - 3,296,516.652 STEEM POWER
- @smartsteem - 3,011,321.463 STEEM POWER
- @appreciator - 1,699,378.639 STEEM POWER
- @rocky1 - 1,544,063.228 STEEM POWER
- @buildawhale - 1,360,661.697 STEEM POWER
- Total: 10,911,941.679 STEEM.
Let's compare that to today's totals:
- @therising - 2,308,483.369 STEEM POWER (Down 30%)
- @smartsteem - 1,189,342.458 STEEM POWER (Down 60.5%)
- @appreciator - 1,975,147.847 STEEM POWER (Up 16.2%)
- @rocky1 - 1,598,573.427 STEEM POWER (Up 3.5%)
- @buildawhale - 1,358,877.951 STEEM POWER (Down 0.1%)
- Total: 8,430,425.052 STEEM (Down 22.7%)
Clearly, the exodus I feared a month ago has begun. Only 8.4 million STEEM left to go... on just these 5 bidbots. That's the scary thought. This STEEM is gonna have to go somewhere and its most likely destination is... let's be honest now... Bitcoin. How is it that I am so sure that bidbots will continue to bleed. Well, that's where my savvy data analysis skills come into play!
Experiment 1: Load up a post with huge bids on bidbots.
Last Friday, I used a post titled "STEEM: FOMO Buy the Pump 🤦🏻♂️" as a litmus test for how the community would react to lots of bidbots being layered on to basically a shitpost. But this platform loves meta shit, so I made it be about STEEM, and also about the lovable Lil Bubble, who by the way just put out an Avril Lavigne crypto parody, "Liquidated," and the video is excellent. Fuck it. Go watch it. I'm not putting any bid bots on this post. Check it out. I'll wait.
So I went to good old steembottracker (Sorry @yabapmatt, but R.I.P.) and dialed up some old friends like dis.
That drew some critics. The post started getting some commentary and then somebody mentioned @ocdb. I still don't know how this account works, but it apparently carries some clout, because the very mention of the account in the comments drew this whale of a downvote, which then pulled all the whales out of the woodwork to downvote the post, too. Take a look:
That @ocdb account is loaded. Just a 20% downvote is like 110+ STEEM. Don't piss that fucker off. Jeez. I understand people don't like bidbots and all. Lord knows I don't want to read @chbartist any more than you do. But without bidbots, this platform is just for whales (unless we figure out some kind of sweet curation scheme). Without bidbots, there is gonna be one mother of a LIQUIDATION at some point in the near future.
So here's the result of my little experiment. Don't buy bidbots. Got it? Sweet. You'll thank me later. Now please go upvote this post so I can get some of my research STEEM back from the whaleeos. 😝
Experiment 2: Promote with Smartsteem
This little site I'm sure has made @therealwolf a mint. Sorry to report, though, that unless he changes the business model there, nobody is gonna use that thing any more either. I just performed the following test with my post titled, "Bitcoin Today, Bitcoin Tomorrow". I paid 55 STEEM and my post's payout increased from 10 STEEM to 102 STEEM, for a net positive of 92 STEEM, only half of which really will go into my wallet, assuming there will not be substantial downvotes, which I'm sure there will be. Even without the inevitable downvotes, spending 55 STEEM to get 46 STEEM back doesn't seem like such a great bargain. If you're trying to promote your posts and don't expect to make any profit off the promotion itself, then fine. But that is a very stark contrast to pre-HF21 STEEM. But hey that's #newsteem! I'm just here sharing my research. I'm sure there'll be new ninja ways to mine STEEM that bubble up to the surface. They may even already be here.
What Made Me Want to Lose Precious STEEM Doing These Experiments?
Well, first of all, I didn't know I would actually be losing any STEEM, though certainly I thought that might be a possibility. Second of all, as I said in this post I've been buying STEEM periodically. So definitely gotta do my DD!
Third, I have since its inception delegated most of my STEEM to the bidbot @therising, so you may think if you hate bidbots, that I am part of the problem. But I had noticed something about the returns I had been getting since HF21. I was keeping tabs for a while. Take a look:
These numbers are based off a delegation of 1,000 STEEM POWER. I just received my payout for today and it is now down to a measly 0.081 STEEM. That's just not worth it any more. So, sorry buds @therising, I will be undelegating that stake as soon as I publish this post. More DEC is always welcome.
So What Do We Do While We Wait for The Great Bidbot Crash?
Don't get me wrong. I'm not unstaking any of my STEEM POWER. It's too much fun challenging myself to contribute some kind of writing here every day, which in turn, believe it or not, makes me better at writing all the stuff that I have to write every day at my day job. I'll just be monitoring those huge bidbot accounts to see what their plans are about the inevitable loss of all that STEEM POWER. And I'll probably enmesh myself more deeply in the few tribes that I really like. In short, I'll just keep stackin' STEEM and LEO and the other cool projects being built here (NOT just bidbots anymore, thank goodness!). After all, that's the STEEM lifestyle.
But probably fiat buys won't make any sense to me until I see some more unwinding of these massive bidbot positions.
What do you guys think? To me, this is one of the most important issues facing the STEEM community right now. And I'm curious to see what's up.
P.S. The badass painting at the top of this post is by Bastien Jez.
Very interesting research. This was a target going into Hard Fork 21/22.
Like everyone I am sure the bidbot owners are trying to figure out the best way to deal with the situation now. How it will all unfold is a good question.
Your numbers prove that many of those who delegated to the biggest bots are pulling their stake. Does it get sold on the open market? Quite possible.
Many pointed to Steemit Inc regularly selling as the reasons for the price going down. The truth is a lot more STEEM it out there.
One interesting fact though, according to the charts put out by @arcange, the number of Whales is actually increasing. There are now 40 when we were just a 36 a little while back. Plus, there MVest total is increasing which is not surprising when someone like Dan purchases 250K STEEM.
Yeah, that's one of the points I tried to make here. While bidbots are not great in terms of letting good content bubble up to the surface, they do actually provide some glimmer of hope to newbies, that they can quickly compound a grubstake into something meaningful rather quickly. Without them, only whale content will float to the top, unless we can figure out some cool curation techniques, which it seems like the community is hard at work doing.
So it's kind of interesting that what might make a healthier ecosystem would actually INCREASE the Gini coefficient (which is what we're seeing with more whales being born).
Great analysis, as always.
I've been saying for a while for the people who hate bidbots that the delegators will (almost) always pursue their best alternative. So if it isn't making a passive 15% in STEEM terms, what will it be?
The way I figure, some of the more technically minded will set up auto-voting curation. Some will dump STEEM for BTC like you say.
With tribes and SMTs, I think the money will shift there for those that manage to create some kind of real value.
The only thing to do is just to keep track of those huge bidbot accounts and be ready to buy a lot of STEEM once it looks like the delegations have hit rock bottom, which honestly probably is going to be zero. Unless, like smartsteem, they pivot over to some other strategy.
Thanks for this post. As a new Steemit user, I've been wrestling with the issue of whether to use bidbots or other upvote services, or not. On the one hand, it seems like it's in poor taste to pay for upvotes, and I should just be concentrating on creating good content. On the other hand, writing good content isn't enough if nobody sees it, and using upvote services does seem to get my content in front of people other than the bots.
Anyway, that's my dilemma, and maybe I should write my own post about it, but this article really clarified some of my thinking about it. Very much appreciated.
A belated welcome to Steem!
I'm no superstar around here, but am pleased to have grown my account more than 100% over my initial fiat purchase, all organically and during a prolonged bear market. It helps immensely to join communities that feature content like yours and encourage people to engage with it. Whatever you are into, it's likely someone runs a regular contest, challenge, or other feature on the topic. If not, you could start one.
Lots of folks say Steem needs better content discovery, and it does, but the organic path of making connections with individuals and groups through your comments as well as your posts works well here. That's how I found you just now!
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Hey, thanks for your reply and your thoughts on this! And congrats on growing your account so dramatically--that's no small feat, from what I've read.
Great point about joining communities. I'm still getting up to speed about the communities that are out there, and how to join them, but I'm keeping an eye out for posts (and contests!) from communities that match my interests.
Also a great point about the path of making comments and engaging. That's something I need to do more of. Glad it worked out in this case! 😄
Looking forward to your own post about it! Please tag me to make sure I see it though! Yeah, that’s the old Catch 22 of the bidbots. Pay up... and you’ll get to trending maybe. If you’re lucky, you’ll pick up some new followers and some organic votes along the way. Don’t pay... and it’s “If a tree falls in the forest with no one around, does it make a sound?”
That was the Old Steem at least. The New Steem ways are still being formed. So it’s a very interesting time to be here on the platform. One thing is for sure: It’s a great time to be blogging for STEEM when it’s cheap like this. That’s why you see old homies like @boxmining back here posting stuff.
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Thanks, I'm hoping to write something about this later today, and I'll definitely tag you!
That's the impression I'm getting about New Steem. I joined just after that hardfork, so I don't have a good sense of the difference, but I see lots of people (yourself included!) talking about how bots are ineffective now. I also see a lot of manual curation efforts being formed, which is cool, but it's unclear how to be noticed by those curators, too.
More to write about, I guess! Thanks again for your thoughts.
I actually have the same problem as a new user. Making quality content is nice, but its nicer if it actually gets some views. I think we are supposed to just keep on writing content and hope we gather enough followers to make steemit worth our time.
Maybe so! And I think part of it is your perspective; maybe if your main goal is just to find a place to record your thoughts, Steemit is worth the time under any circumstances. But I think a lot of people are like you (and me)--even if they're not in it for the rewards, they do hope for some exposure for their ideas.
Very nice post and justifies why I got out of them several weeks ago.
!trdovoter 100
Thanks @theguruasia! How does this TRDO token work? I got airdropped a bunch of it but for the life of me can’t figure out what to do with it.
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@shanghaipreneur,
I hope this article might help you on this. If you have TRDO stake, you are eligible to call TRDO to reward quality contents and earn 40% curation!
https://steempeak.com/trdo/@theguruasia/trendo-token-sustainable-tga-discussion
Call TRDO by one of the below command
!trdo
$trdo
!trendotoken
$trendotoken
Cheers~
Comments can not get TRDO reward!
"Call TRDO, Your Comment Worth Something!"
To view or trade TRDO go to steem-engine.com
Join TRDO Discord Channel or Join TRDO Web Site
Congratulations @theguruasia, you are successfuly trended the post that shared by @shanghaipreneur!
@shanghaipreneur got 7.86834000 TRDO & @theguruasia got 5.24556000 TRDO!
"Call TRDO, Your Comment Worth Something!"
To view or trade TRDO go to steem-engine.com
Join TRDO Discord Channel or Join TRDO Web Site
Thank you for posting from the https://steemleo.com interface 🦁
Not a fan of newsteem and the way it is set up. Your post is fantastic and very well wrote.
There are delegation > upvote services out there. Check out @steemcryptosicko
No. Thats nonsense.
You’re kidding, right?
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No. What you said is absolute nonsense.
There is no reason whatsoever for bot investors to leave when they can make on the low end exactly as much as they did with bots (probably more) and potentially make 2 times that with a bit of effort.
I make around 2.5 Steem per 1000SP and my efficiency is bad, around 50%.
I will make around 1400 SP in a year which is 15%.
You have people that make 4.5 steem per 1000 SP and their ROI is much higher.
Nah. The only bot investors that will leave are butthurt ones that are emotionally driven.
Those that look at ROI will not leave because this changes nothing for them. Even provides an opportunity.
So what you wrote is beyond nonsense, its fear mongering.
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Fear mongering? Huh? Please give us the details on your numbers. 2.5 steem per 1kSP per day? Per week? Per month? Doing what exactly? Does it require active participation? Because the big appeal of delegating to bid bots is that it was COMPLETELY PASSIVE. Set it and forget it. What is the equivalent passive investment opportunity in #newsteem? I’m asking because I honestly want to know.
Fear mongering:
You can check my numbers on Steemworld.
I just got delegated 2000 SP yesterday so my stats are valid for around 9400 SP.
You can do the math for yourself.
Around 2.5 sp per 1000 based on @abh12345 curation list.
You can see the list on his weekly post.
Im somewhere in the lower middle of the list. The top curator gets around 4.5 steem per 1000 SP which is about 30% ROI.
Its weekly. Not daily. I make currently around 25 SP a week from curation.
There are 52 weeks in a year.
My mounthly interest is 1.15%. Put that in a compounding interest calculator and you get 15%.
And those 25 a week are the worst ive done in a while.
Id say that around 70% of my votes are autovotes. This is what my steemvoter looks like.
If i put in more effort i know i would do better.
By being passive i see no reason you cant do better then i can or be at least on equal grounds.
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Ok, that is something we can talk about. My little autovote trail probably does similar to yours. I may not be trying to maximize steem return with it, but maybe supporting tribes I like. Whatever’s cool with me.
I think, however, that a lot of folks who delegated to bidbots for passive investment opportunity are not even going to do the research to figure out how to auto-vote. That’s my fear, at least. Worst case scenario is all of them sell for BTC. I don’t think that’s going to happen, but I think it is likely that BTC is the largest destination for that currently locked up STEEM.
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"Worst case scenario" is different from what you said in the post.
If they were invested in bots for a ROI, the possibility of higher returns with the exact same PASSIVE behavior is something that should not only stop them from leaving but rather encourage them to buy more.
The only ones that will leave are those emotionally driven that want to make a point because of butthurt.
And to those i say good riddance.
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“Most likely” is what is written, which by no means means “all”
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@ocdb was a whitelisted bot created by @ocd that is doing manual curration and downvoting now.
@ocdb was a non profit "bot" (not a bid bot) that whitelisted authors could use to help promote their undervalued posts (before the hardfork) and then the curration rewards went to delegators so it was 100% non-profit.
I had 1000 SP delegated to OCDB and as a non profit bot with 1000 delegation was making about as much in curration rewards as I was using around 700 SP. I have a feeling, unless something changes, most of these bots will die as manual curration becomes more valuable then passive investing.
Once my undelegations are complete this will be the first time in a long time that I will have "complete control" over 100% of my Steem Power.
It’s noce to have control for once over your SP. For me, I am finding some decent returns at minnowbooster (~17.5%), at least for the moment.
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That's interesting, I had not stopped to think of all the people who would be moving their $$ off the platform now that this passive income has flopped.
Still though, there are other parts of the platform for us to invest in.
Yeah, that seems to be the burning question. How much moves off platform? How much goes to Steem Engine stuff? How much goes to curation? It’ll be interesting to see it unwind, even if it might get a little sickening from a STEEM price perspective.
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